“Oh, don’t I wish we were near enough to hear them!” said I, totally unmindful of my future profession. But shortly after we had even greater cause of rejoicing. The enemy (as we had already learnt to call them) were disembarking their cannon, and lowering these unwieldly articles of war into a long boat, but zeal outstripping discretion, they so over-weighted the boat, that lurching forward heavily she upset, and the whole of her cumbrous cargo was shortly at the bottom of the sea. It was a satisfaction even to think of it. Aye, and we may think of it still, for to this very day those foreign cannon are rolling about and rusting in the unquiet waters of Carrig Gwastad creek—a proof, should one ever be needed, of the truth of this strange story. “Thank the Lord again,” said Llewelyn. CHAPTER III. THE FATE OF THE CLOCK. Great bonfires now lit up the side of the hill beneath Trehowel—in the place still called the French camp—and scores of dark figures rushed about with torches flaring wildly in their hands; the whole scene reminding one forcibly of Pandemonium, that is, if one is capable of being reminded of a place one has never seen and that one has no desire to see. Even the thought of it at the moment was unpleasant to me as bringing my neglected studies to my mind, so I hastily turned my attention once more to the French. The boats and the sailors had now returned to their ships, having landed the invading hordes (which was the term we usually applied to the Gallic soldiers), who now seemed more bent on cooking than on conquering, on supping than on surprising. [Picture: Cottage at Castell] We watched the erection of beams and bars over the huge fires; and the slinging on to the bars of great pots and pans of all sorts—mostly intimate friends of poor Nancy who watched all these proceedings with many a groan and warm ejaculation as she thought of all her wasted scrubbings in the back kitchen of Trehowel. The precise number of the men who landed that night on a bit (though remote) of Great Britain was fourteen hundred; of whom six hundred were regular troops, and eight hundred were convicts of the basest sort, described, indeed, in the pamphlets of the time as the sweepings of the gaols. Besides these, there were two women; and had the fourteen hundred been animated by the spirit which possessed these two of the weaker sex, the result might have been much more unpleasant to the Principality than it actually was. The Welsh woman beside me was not by any means deficient in spirit either, it even sometimes took the form of temper, yet to my astonishment I heard the sound of sobs which could only proceed from her, as Llewelyn was hardly likely to relieve his feelings in this way.